In conversation today at the office, we found ourselves mulling over the disproportionate number of search marketing folks who hail from or live in Canada (aka hockey-land). In trying to ascertain what environmental or cultural factors might account for the propensity of the maple-minded to seek employment in the search field, we came across a few ideas:

• Canadians are disturbingly clean, a trait that helps when it comes to coding, authoring content and sending emails. Plus, a virtual work environment is more natural, as it creates very little refuse.
• Adding "eh?" to queries created problems for many Canadians, forcing them to conduct further research about how search engines operate.
• During the cold, Canadian winters, many families hovered around their PCs for warmth when other heating devices were unavailable.
• The all-purpose Canadian verb "to hork," technically means stealing, purloining or taking away, but can also be applied to the SERPs, i.e. "We totally horked their rankings, eh?"
• The trade of SEO requires a high level of geekiness, for which Canadians have an enviable pre-disposition.
• Precision strikes in games like hockey and curling has given Canadians the uncanny, catlike reflexes necssary to identify links, keywords and crawl errors.

While I don't want to overplay the stereotype that all Canadians are good at SEO, this is clearly a case where the shoe fits. Apologies in advance to those taking offense, but it's clear which English-speaking country is most over-represented in the search world, and sweeping this fact under the carpet won't make the US, Australia & the UK any more competitive.